During recnet years, the number of persons living alone in the United states has increased dramatically. It is important to understand the sources of demographic change of this magnitude because of its implications for housing needs, energy consumption, and demand for the entire range of private and public sector goods and services purchased at the household level. Moreover, to the extent that these changes reflect shifts in the preference or "taste" for living alone, they may signal more fundamental change in the value placed on privacy and a decline in the importance of the family in determining residence patterns. The primary objective of the proposed research is to decompose the change in the living alone population into three explanatory components: (1) change due to shifts in the distribution of the population among marital/family status categories with varying probabilities of living alone; (2) change in the educational and income levels of the population; (3) change in the preference for living alone as reflected in shifts in the size of the effects of education and income on the probability of living alone. The propsoed data sets are the March Current Population Survey for the years 1973, 1975, 1977 and 1979. The analytic techniques involve the decomposition of change between adjacent survey years with a combination of additive regression equations and logarithmic transformations of multiplicative equations. Each analysis of change in the living alone population is conducted with categories of age, sex and marital status. The successful completion of the research will provide a comprehensive decomposition of change in the living alone population, permitting the separation of change due to shifts in the demographic characteristics of the population from change due to shifts in the value placed on living alone. The results will increase our understanding of why the recent increase in living alone has taken place. They will also serve as part of the empirical foundation necessary for making projections of the living alone population.